Karl Fiebrig was a German botanist who specialized in plant ecology and insect biology and lived in Asunción (Paraguay) from 1910 to 1936. In 1914 he founded the Jardín Botánico y Zoológico de Asunción and worked there as director until 1936. He travelled around Bolivia from 1903 to 1904 and around Paraguay from 1904 to 1909, collecting plant specimens for European museums. In 1923 the University of Marburg awarded him an honorary doctorate (“for services to promoting the reputation of Germany in South America”) in recognition of this work. From 1936 to 1945 he worked as a country specialist (Argentina, Columbia, Paraguay, Uruguay) and as a specialist for biology at today’s Ibero-American Institute (IAI) of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin. He emigrated to Argentina in 1945 and worked as a botanist in the Instituto Miguel Lillo at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán.

Material: 

19 folders

• 1 manuscript (“Die Pflanzenwelt Südamerikas mit Berücksichtigung der ökologisch dazu gehörenden mittelamerikanischen Flora. Versuch einer vergleichenden Übersicht über die Lebensverhältnisse der Pflanzen und die Beziehungen zwischen Floren und Umwelt”)
• list of plants named after Fiebrig
• correspondence (with Fiebrig’s heirs)
• documents on the Fiebrig family
• biographical information
• 2 photo albums
• nearly 470 photos and  postcards
• offprints, journals, books